


A Tree to Hang Forever

by sharkie



Category: Sunless Sea
Genre: F/F, Mortality, Offscreen Canonical Character Death, Pre-Relationship, The Elder Continent, Worldbuilding, Yuletide Treat, references to cannibalism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-25 11:46:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17120768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharkie/pseuds/sharkie
Summary: Adam’s Way. Eve’s burden.





	A Tree to Hang Forever

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thereinafter (isyche)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/isyche/gifts).



They’ve arrived at Apis Meet with no fuel to spare, buffeted by relentless Wax-Wind and pursued by a flock of Blue Prophets. The coastguards are the final obstacle to docking. Luckily, they’ve come prepared.

To gain entry for a day, visitors must provide the Gracious with a suitable story. The Captain reads them a previously unopened log acquired from a trade in Codex. It ends abruptly, right after an intriguing discovery.

The official is unperturbed. “Endings always disappoint, don’t you think?”

***

The Presbyterate Adventuress refuses to follow the Captain inland, for fear of being caught by the College of Mortality, though this is logically the last place where they'd expect to find her. Even on board the docked ship, she warily watches each face from her cabin’s window, accustomed to assassins and informants. Only a very, very early dessert can put her at some ease.

“I have only delayed the inevitable, really,” says the Indomitable Campaigner, helping herself to another heap of sorbet. Her new lease on life has lightened her voice and brightened her eyes. Counter-intuitively, she’s been glowing more than ever since curing her animescence. Her happiness would be entirely endearing if not for the incongruity of their fates.

The Adventuress lets her spoon clatter into her own empty chalice. “Your soul’s not alight anymore. That’s a permanent victory.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” says the Campaigner, laughing faintly. “I could still burn from the inside, with the proper encouragement.” _Jokes_ _._ She’s _joking_ now. On second thought, maybe she is still dying, after all.

The Adventuress closes her eyes in exasperation. She pictures their Captain visiting the town’s square. The seed planted at ‘dawn’ has doubtless begun to sprout into a sapling. Mentally, she urges the Captain to quit gawking. It’s a perfectly mundane everyday process. Sure, the Captain is a foreigner, but the Adventuress and the Campaigner wouldn't waste a day pondering London’s sewage system, would they?

Opening her eyes, she discovers the Campaigner watching her with a tiger's intensity. Not for the first time, she feels dissected by the gaze: a living case study, but living nonetheless. Lately, the Adventuress has been obsessed with her own death, enduring a mixture of dread and resolution at every port, followed by frustration when death is unbecoming. It's refreshing, to feel empowered and incurable all at once. 

“Let’s go for a stroll,” the Campaigner suggests. The Adventuress snorts and stands, knocking her chalice off the table.

***

They climb a hill overlooking the estuary. The Adventuress focuses on the Zee, her home for years, not upon the Mountain of Light. The Zee is unforgiving. But it doesn’t withhold. It doesn’t taunt with hope, doesn’t wreathe itself in light before condemning people to oblivion.

Outside the Continent, Presbyterate agents often disguise themselves as Third City tomb-colonists. The Adventuress mocked the tradition until she set foot in Tanah-Chook. In the colonies, the nearly-dead near-unanimously celebrate their conclusion, albeit in a solemn way. (Those who refuse to die stay restrained to beds in Sanatoriums, at the edge of madness; they are considered mad for preferring that fate in the first place.)

Some colonists embrace their end with lusty sighs and an audience; a frost-moth emerges, beautiful and purposeful. Some colonists choose to immolate in the Surface sun; meaningless, to one raised under the Mountain's light, but admirably bold to the Adventuress. In short, there is nothing more anathema to the Continent’s lavish lives and abrupt, brusque deaths. And there is no greater affirmation of loyalty than wrapping oneself in antithesis. It makes the Adventuress glad she joined London’s Navy, frankly.

All this, she candidly confides to the Campaigner. They needn't see the budding tree in the square to know that noon has just ended: there’s a certain feel for the passing of hours that one can’t forget, even after decades away.  

“This could be your last return to our homeland,” the Campaigner reminds the Adventuress. “Are these truly the last words you wish to utter on this soil?”

The Adventuress fiddles with her pistol like she's considering shooting the ground. “We’re still talking.”

“Is this your last sentiment, then? I do not speak in judgement, mind you,” the Campaigner adds, furrowing her brow. “I only hope you won’t regret it.”

“It wouldn't be for long even if I did. Besides, all my regrets are on other people’s behalf,” the Adventuress insists. Her bl__dy father, for one. Being punished for his mess almost makes her sympathise with the Mountain of Light, Stone, whatever She is. Too bad She’s part of the punishment.

The Campaigner follows the Adventuress’ gaze to the god in question. “I'm curious - have you ever prayed to the Daughter concerning your situation?”

“Never saw the point. I can’t have a good life, so I’d like to have a good death.” The Adventuress casts a final derisive glance in the Mountain’s direction. “I doubt She knows much about that. Did _you?”_ she turns the question around as she whirls to face the Campaigner, almost accusatory.

The Campaigner looks amused. “Did I pray?”

“Did you know?”

In the coming days, in the blessedly private dark of her cabin, the Adventuress will remember isolated elements of their conversation. The curl of the Campaigner’s lips. The swell of sudden anticipation. The Campaigner hardly speaks about her illness, preferring to pour her energy into her job. But alone with the Adventuress, overlooking the Neath’s most abundant source of life, she is forced to reflect on her brush with death. 

“I assume you’ve met others afflicted with animescence,” says the Campaigner. “Many people consider souls a form of ‘life’. Painfully metaphorical, but understandable. To have it complicit in killing you…” During her pause, something shifts in her gaze, more definite than contemplation yet too wondering for a true conclusion. “I can’t say whether my death would’ve been satisfactory,” she says slowly. “It wouldn’t have been lonely. Although that was small consolation at the time.”

“Better than dying here,” the Adventuress guesses. Her companion nods - it's far from her style to deteriorate in an animescence hospital. The Adventuress could’ve given herself up in the Continent as well. The College is ruthlessly efficient, not cruel. But it's crushing defeat, somehow, to expire amidst all this life. The Adventuress shrugs. “Not that I hate the place. I can admit the Presters rule well.”

“I would pity them, if I were the sort,” says the Campaigner, with the hint of a disdainful sniff. “I don’t envy eternity spent nameless and shut away from society.”

“And forgotten,” the Adventuress agrees. Her greatest fear. She hates how her voice trembles.

The Campaigner doesn’t suggest that in that sense, the Adventuress will outlive them. Instead, she says, “We call it 'life' because it's practically the opposite of death. Without death, it would be mere existence.”

Unexpectedly, she clasps the Adventuress’ hand. It’s less of a conventional lover’s touch; more like she’s gripping someone at risk of falling. The Adventuress swears she’s seen it before - from tomb-colonist to tomb-colonist, before an Emergence. Her cheeks heat despite the Mountain's oppressive warmth. She shivers, too. 

“So live,” the Campaigner concludes, squeezing once, releasing her. “Even though death is certain. You've been careless lately. I advise against sitting around thinking about the end while you can still start something.”

Their people avoid ashes, disallow dust. The Replete let the dead settle in their guts and nourish the next day. Some families retain the sentiment if not the literal practice. Unsurprising, then, that the Campaigner advocates a fertile end. The fugitive Adventuress almost demands, _Why not greet death with death, for once?_  But it seems wrong to raise the challenge to this particular woman. It would be irreligious, no matter how the Adventuress dislikes Stone. The Adventuress reconsiders what living means. She considers the Campaigner. 

Seconds, perhaps minutes or hours, pass in silence. A rare waxless breeze stirs their hair. The Campaigner's dark eyes are darker with what repressed Londoners would misidentify as sin. The Adventuress may feel too young to die, but she can recognise temptation when she sees it. The Campaigner's stance suggests that it's her choice to act. Knowledge routinely drives people to madness. It might be wiser not to bite. Perhaps it would be safer for them both, so near her death, when the slightest miscalculation could throw her off course. But, as the Adventuress said, she is unfamiliar with personal regret.

A breath of change passes. (Below, browned leaves snap off the tree’s branches, flit down to patchy grass.) The Campaigner raises a hand, as if to stroke the Adventuress’ cheek. The Adventuress doesn’t pay attention to where that touch ultimately lands, since their mouths meet. It happens quickly. The ghost of a kiss, of charged touch. The Zee is cold and its nights are endless. The Mountain is too bright, insistent in its sweltering reach. Yet their gradual embrace is, if not perfect, a balance; the union of what cannot be regained and the future that cannot be. For now, the present is comforting. The Adventuress sees the appeal of treasuring it. 

(And deeper in her mind, she sees the naked tree, beginning to wither. Already the curls of smoke have lessened in the residential areas, the marketplace clearing at a languid pace. Most locals have many more tomorrows. She can stand tall here, in the arms of another native, but she’s exiled inside.)

The Campaigner is the first to withdraw, businesslike in her satisfaction. She strokes two fingertips over the Adventuress’ parted lips, and the Adventuress savours the faint char on her flesh; she resists the instinct to chase it with her tongue, stepping back with a curt nod like they’ve finished a military inspection. Above all, the Campaigner tastes of life, of renewal. But she hasn't shed the tang of fear.

“I’ll see you on the ship,” rasps the Campaigner. They’ll need to focus, to get to Port Carnelian. It lacks obvious opportunities for a glorious death. They won't part yet. 

If the Campaigner lingers, the Adventuress doesn’t know. She’s busy scorning and relishing her last view of the Mountain. Then she walks away, her head held high, watching the Campaigner’s back further ahead. For whatever time she has left, the promise of _more_ is precious indeed.

***

“Wait.” The Campaigner pushes a salt-scented leather journal into the Captain’s hands before they disembark. “What use do we have for it, otherwise?” she questions, as briskly as befits her old name. “And she would want it exchanged for something better than a few Echoes. _Would’ve_ wanted it,” she corrects herself, unblinking.  

So the Captain reads the journal to the Gracious. Of the Adventuress’ family and friends, there is nothing. First there are memories of adventures: the ages before the Grand Geode, the untidy growth of the Corsair’s Forest, the battles with the Pirate-Poet.

Then there are memories of the Adventuress’ homeland, laced with speculation and bitterness and whimsy: _“...we don't eat anything that flies; they're said to carry the airs of the garden that let us live forever. It's just sentiment._ _Londoners love to talk about that Icarus fellow. I think She dreams of flight that's her birthright._ _”_ That’s the last sentence. There had been more to add, the Captain could tell, but the Abbey’s bells had tolled to signal ‘dawn’, and the Adventuress was gone.

The Captain smiles apologetically. “Endings always disappoint.”

(Though not this one, really. Not where it mattered.) 

It’s a story. It’s accepted without protest. And, in the town’s square, a yellow-robed priestess plants a seed. It won't survive the day; they never do. But it will certainly mark it. 


End file.
